New Kennedy Center honoree Billy Joel, who has only played a handful of rare gigs the past few years, is returning to the concert stage in historic fashion. The 64-year-old Piano Man plans to play NYC’s 20,000-seat Madison Square Garden once a month for what Business Week says will be the rest of his life (a statement from the venue says the run will last as long as there is a demand for tickets).

Joel, who has played the legendary venue 46 times already beginning in 1978, will begin his monthly concerts on Jan. 27. Announced dates include Feb. 3, March 21, April 18 and May 9, his 65th birthday.

However, Joel will also go on tour. The first two show stops will take place at the Hollywood Bowl on May 17 and May 22.

Rod Stewart says Faces to reunite

Rod Stewart says it looks as though he’ll reunite with his old band The Faces in 2015, he tells Boston radio station WZLX.

When asked about a possible reunion with Jeff Beck, the band leader with whom he first found fame, the 68-year-old Stewart said: “I think we have got more of a chance of getting The Faces back together. In Fact, Ronnie’s office is talking to my people and we’re earmarking 2015.”

“Ronnie” is Faces guitarist Ron Wood, who has been with The Rolling Stones since 1975. He and Stewart were founding members of The Jeff Beck Group in 1968. The other Faces, drummer Kenny Jones and keyboardist Ian McLagan, would almost certainly be on board any reunion as well. Those three surviving Faces, sans Stewart, have reunited in recent years for a world tour and numerous British gigs with former Simply Red singer Mick Hucknall handling Stewart’s vocals and Sex Pistols bassist Glen Matlock doing the duties once handled by Ronnie Lane, who died in 1997.

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Garth Brooks to tour in 2014

Garth Brooks told a surprised Robin Roberts on ABC’s “Good Morning, America” that next year he will tour for the first time since 2000, and he’s bringing his long-dormant band with him.

The 51-year-old Country Music Hall of Famer who was the third best-selling recording artist in America in the 20th Century behind first The Beatles and then Elvis, just finished a five-year solo residency at Steve Wynn’s Encore Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas with an intimate shows that saw him tell tales of his life while performing dozens of the songs that inspired him.

Brooks told Roberts that the time was right because the youngest kid that he’s raised with his second wife, country star Trisha Yearwood, is set to graduate from high school. Brooks didn’t divulge any other details about the tour.

His new 4-CD/1-DVD box set, “Blame It all on My Roots: Five Decades of Influences” that was inspired by his Vegas show, debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s country albums chart ad No. 3 on the Top 200 pop album chart.

Dolly Parton also sets 2014 world tour

Dolly Parton announced that she’s kicking off her 2014 Blue Smoke World Tour on Jan. 24 in the desert resort town of Rancho Mirage at the 2,000-seat The Show theatre at the Agua Caliente Casino and Resort before heading over to Primm in Nevada at Stateline for a show on Jan. 25 at the 6,500-seat Star of the Desert Arena.

Parton, who turns 68 next month, is touring to promote her “Black Smoke” album that comes out in Australia and New Zealand on Jan. 31 and in the U.S. and Europe in May. So, after a couple more American gigs in Reno and Phoenix, she’ll head Down Under for 10 shows in Australia and New Zealand through the month of February.

To coincide with the album’s American release date she’ll spend the last half of May here, playing seven concerts, four of them in Oklahoma. She’ll spend June and July touring Britain and Europe.

Parton sings a duet with her old pal Kenny Rogers on the title song of his new album, “You Can’t Make Old Friends.”

Surviving Doors Krieger and Densmore reunite

The last two surviving members of The Doors, guitarist Robbie Krieger and drummer John Densmore, shared a stage together, ending 15 years of bad blood, bad feelings and legal wrangling. The event was the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “An Evening With The Door,” reports Rolling Stone. The event coincided with what would have been Jim Morrison’s 70th birthday.

Densmore and Krieger sat together for a Q&A anchored by music-loving film critic Elvis Mitchell. However, people in the packed house were surprised when the pair actually performed together. Their four-song set included Doors classics, “People Are Strange” and “Love Me Two Times.”

“I had a lot of fun. I would do this again a few times, maybe,” Densmore told Rolling Stone.

He added that he and Krieger were to perform together again, “it would be for some charity.”

Krieger chimed in saying that he and Densmore are still hoping to produce a show in tribute to The Doors’ keyboardist Ray Manzarek, who died in May. He noted that the tribute would take place on Feb. 12, what would have been Manzarek’s 75th birthday.

Fabled Dylan electric guitar sells for nearly $1 million

In 1965 at the hallowed Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan literally electrified a shocked audience when the then-acoustic folk deity performed for the first time with an electric guitar, backed by an electric rock band (led by guitarist Mike Bloomfield and with pianist Barry Goldberg and organist Al Kooper, who founded the jazz-rock band Blood, Sweat and Tears two years later). It was only a four-song set but it made music history and the worlds of pop, rock and folk were never the same.

The 1964 Fender Stratocaster that Dylan played during that show was auctioned to an anonymous buyer who wasn’t in attendance at Christies in New York City. The sales price, $965,000, was a world auction record for a guitar.

“Blackie,” a Fender Stratocaster owned by Eric Clapton was the previous record holder when it sold for $959,500 in 2004.

In addition, a sheet of lyrics that Dylan accidently left on a private airplane was sold for $20,000. Four other lyric sheets he also left on board went unsold.

Springsteen’s handwritten “Born to Run” lyrics sell big

Five days before Dylan’s famed electric guitar was sold, Sotheby’s in New York City auctioned off Bruce Springsteen’s original sheet of handwritten lyrics to the song that made him an international star in 1975, “Born to Run.” An anonymous buyer paid $197,000 for the manuscript that had expected to sell in the $100,000 range.

Other items sold in that auction were a letter that John Lennon wrote in 1967 that sold for $18,000, and three love letters written in 1965 by Mick Jagger that went for $8,000.

Neil Young will reunite with Crazy Horse next year

Last summer, when Neil Young and Crazy Horse were touring Europe, Crazy Horse guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro suffered a hand injury severe enough that the remaining dates on the tour were cancelled.

At the time, Sampedro speculated that because they were all getting older, Crazy Horse may have played its final shows with Young, with whom the band had been recording and touring on and off since 1968. Not so, as Young announced that he and Crazy Horse will play some of those cancelled shows this summer, including the Barclaycard British Summertime concert in Hyde Park in London on July 12.

Young will kick off the New Year with a four-night stand as a solo act at Carnegie Hall in New York City, Jan. 6-10.

Then, he’s heading north to his native Canada for four benefit shows, each with jazz pianist Diana Krall as his support act. The concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina and Calgary, Jan. 12-19, will aid the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in its legal battles with the Canadian government and oil companies to preserve the land.

Aretha Franklin to make a big return

The last two years have seen 71-year-old Aretha Franklin suffer numerous unspecified health setbacks. But the Queen of Soul, who performed “Joy to the World” at the lighting ceremony of the National Christmas Tree in Washington, DC, this week with the First Family in attendance, is easing into a busier performing schedule.

Franklin will play three full-length concerts for the first time in a couple years.

On Dec. 21, she’ll perform at the Sound Board in the Motor City Casino Hotel in her hometown of Detroit. Then, she’ll inaugurate 2014 with two concerts, on Jan. 17 and 18 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.